Elvis to leave the Supreme Court

The iconic photo of President Richard Nixon meeting with Elvis Presley on Dec. 21, 1970, in Washington. (Elvis is the one on the right.) Retiring Supreme Court clerk William Suter was photographed with Elvis in 1958. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The justices may be headed off to Europe and other places for the summer, but the high court still made some history this week, with the retirement of William Suter, who’d been the clerk of the court for the last 22 years.

To put this in perspective, Chief Justice John Roberts is only the 17th chief justice of the United States. Suter, who’s retiring at the end of August, is just the 19th clerk of the court. (The clerk’s office, among other things, oversees court filings, handles the docket and records all the court’s actions.)

In addition, it’s probably a safe assumption that Suter is — and will forever be — the only clerk of the court in history who has a picture in his office of himself and Elvis Presley in 1958, when Elvis was in basic training at Fort Hood, Tex.

Scott S. Harris, who’s been the Supreme Court’s legal counsel for 11 years, is replacing Suter. Harris was an assistant U.S. attorney before going to the high court in 2002.

Harris is the son of former U.S. Attorney and then U.S. District Judge Stanley Harris. Of much more import to Nats fans, Harris is the grandson of Bucky Harris, baseball Hall of Fame member who, among other things, was the player-manager of the 1924 Washington Senators baseball team that won the city’s only World Series.